As a rule, in the times of adversity, facing death closely, individuals tend to rely upon their faith as a source of the moral strength, resistance and as the only support for the intrinsic humanity and mercy. On the other hand, the writings, shedding light upon the events of WWII, explicitly operate within the context, in which God is dead, and individuals are driven precisely by their survival instinct. Both Vonnegut and Hemingway provide the coping alternatives to religion, but naturally take distinct approaches: whereas Hemingway places earthly love as religion, thus not going too far beyond the Christian doctrine, Vonnegut , influenced heavily by existentialism, tries to develop a different type of sacred or spiritual knowledge, embodied by the Tralfamadorians.
Main text
At the very beginning of “A Farewell to Arms”, the major categorically claims: “All thinking men are atheists” (Hemingway, p.8), actually expressing the author’s views. Hemingway clearly divides his characters into two categories: faithful, deeply pious peasants (including the priest) and officers, who simply appear incapable of reconciling the fact of long cruel war that in fact has been occurring since the beginning of the century, and the existence of the supernatural force, believed as the source of grace and salvation.
In fact, all religious institutions, deprived of their past magnificence and mysteriousness, endured collapse at the time of the war, so religion was normally embodied by priests, who were no longer capable of commanding respect. Therefore, the militants frequently tease and mock the priest, enjoying his defenselessness; this prominent allegory suggests the dominance of rough physical power, the true masculinity represented by Rinaldi and indicates that faith is absolutely powerless against war and that no miracles are available any longer.
Interestingly, Rinaldi also sylmbolizes the main of “Hemingway’s literary style” – a deeply traumatized, sleepless and restless product of the war, consumed by self-mechanization as well as the mechanization of his patients, as this is the only way of maintaining sanity in the surgeon’s position; Rinaldi is the extremity or the edge of atheism, after which only nihilism might come. On the other hand, Henry, the protagonist, feels to some extent uncomfortable when observing the soldiers harassing the clergyman, especially after falling in love with Catherine.
In fact, his spiritual and emotional experience of deep affection and the sense of responsibility for the weaker person are parallelized to the Christian insight of the Divine Inspiration, Mercy and Grace. Therefore, it would be unwise to affirm that religion as a worldview is rejected in the writing; instead, the author simply shifts between the two different value systems, the Christian grace and the secular love, both characterized by faith as well as devotion – for instance, Henry actually falls into arbitrariness and flees the army for the sake of the peaceful family life with Catherine.
However, in the conversations with the priest, Henry reveals that the Christian spirit is the result of the defeat, probably implying that this particular religion is inherent to the unsuccessful and the marginalized. Count Greffi whom the protagonist meets before leaving the front for Catherine states that notwithstanding his cultural and religious background and his relatively privileged position in the wartime, he is not capable of converting completely, and Frederic realizes this man aged 94 will die fully pointless and uncertain and find no afterlife, as death is the final destiny.
Vonnegut, although connate to Hemingway in both style and problematics, elaborates the theme of religion and embeds it to the general framework of the intrinsic absurd underlying human existence. For instance, narrating about Billy’s family, the author notes that his mother was extremely interested in the Christian symbols so that she quickly got bored with the churches she attended, judging exceptionally by the aesthetic criterion.
As a result, she decorated the whole flat with crucifixes, which, however, did not increase the level of the household’s devoutness at all. His sarcastic, deeply insulting approach to the Christian religion is associated with the reconsideration of the war events in the 1950s-1960s with reference to the Kantian transcendence and the Nietzschean nihilism, as opposed to Hemingway’s writing, containing only the implications of latter paradigm.
Owing to his own fascination with the notion of the transcendental cognition, Vonnegut actually depicts the act of transcending or ascending bend the boundary of the mind, fettered by the objective reality. The protagonist’s diversion into the Tralfamadorian world represents a religious inspiration, which is ironic to some extent. For instance, the protagonist is exposed in the zoo along with the pornographic star, although this reality is actually a residence of the new knowledge. Its inhabitants are granted with the gift or providence, as they are capable of seeing the forthcomingL “Imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear”( Vonnegut, p. 115). Due to the fact that they are equated to God, the Christian deity is depicted a unwilling or incapable of influencing or shaping the future, so the major morale Vonnegut develops in the context of religion is the finiteness of human life, regardless of human efforts to change or improve the future, regardless of their faith and commitment to the doctrine.
Conclusion
To sum up, both writings have the elements of the Nietzschean nihilism in relation to religion – basically because both Hemingway and Vonnegut ground their works on the notion of the absence of God, yet the latter also erects a transcendental superstructure over this nihilism, in order to prove he ultimate pointlessness and absurd of religion in the overall context of the illogical human subsistence.
Works cited
Hemingway, E. A Farewell to Arms. Scribner, 1995.
Vonnegut, K. Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. New York: Dell Publishing Co.